The Debutante Ball Welcomes Camille Noe Pagán (Giveaway!)

Camille is a journalist by day (she writes for SELF, Parade and Arthritis Today, among others) and novelist by night and weekend. She also blogs at SvelteGourmand.com and theWAHMdiaries.com. She recently moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan, with her husband, daughter (3) and son (6 months).

Stick around after Camille’s visit to enter to win a copy of The Art of Forgetting!

Camille Noe Pagán Takes the Deb Interview!

Talk about one thing that’s making you happy right now.

My novel is about friendship, so I’ve been thinking a lot about how lucky I am to have good friends. With that in mind, I’ll say Deb Sarah is making me happy! She and I became virtual friends about a year and a half ago after realizing that we shared a literary agent (Elisabeth Weed) and wrote for all of the same magazines. Shortly after, she sold her novel, The Violets of March, to my editor at Penguin (we were also pregnant with our sons at the same time! If she wasn’t tall and blonde, I’d suspect that we were secret twins).

Anyway, Sarah is one of the first people that I turn to with gripes (mean-spirited reviews!) and victories (foreign rights sales! New novel ideas!). The publishing process can be a crazy-making and lonely experience, and it has been priceless to have someone in the trenches with me to talk to about it all. At the same time, Sarah inspires me—I’m trudging along on my second novel at a snail’s pace while trying to adjust to life with two kids while she has three boys and is already working on novel number three. I think having one good friend who shows you that yes, it really can be done (!) is a must; it’s that little spark that lights the fire under your backside and gets you moving.

What is your advice for aspiring writers?

Ignore the naysayers and go for it. If I had a dollar for every time someone spewed some “good” advice about how impossible it is to get published or how if you could do anything other than writing you should do it, I would never need another book advance.
It’s not that it’s easy to get published or that the road will be smooth, but you have to cling to your optimism and hope if you want to be able to sit down at your computer each day and keep writing. (That’s true, I now know, even if you’ve already managed to sell a manuscript).

What three things would you want with you if stranded on a desert island?

My laptop, a working electrical outlet, and an Internet connection. I might get tired of eating raw fish and mango but I’d never get bored if I had access to Twitter and my favorite blogs (hello, Debutante Ball!). However, this obsessive LOST fan would consider trading her computer for Sawyer, or in a pinch, Sayid.

What’s your next big thing?

I’ve been meaning to start a blog about being a writer and work-at-home mom for a year (seriously!) and I finally got it up and running last month. The result: theWAHMdiaries.com. It’s still in the early stages, but it’s been so much fun; I have more blog post ideas than I have time to write.

What is the best perk of your job?

The endless possibilities that writing affords me. Right now, I write women’s fiction and cover health and nutrition as a journalist; but if I decided that I wanted to pen, say, a mystery series and do an investigative report on corruption in Detroit, I could do that with some effort but without totally upending my life.

Plus, I’ve been my own boss since I became a freelance writer seven years ago, and I would not trade that for all the money in the world. It’s not that I sit around in my pajamas all day eating bon bons and writing when the muse strikes; I get dressed every single morning (even if that only entails putting on clean yoga pants), keep regular hours and make myself work, whether I feel like it or not. Yet even when I’m writing something benign like “Thirty-seven ways to cure a cold sore,” I am always, always aware of how incredibly fortunate I am to have my career and the life that comes with it.

Camille, thank you so much for joining us! If you’d like to learn more, you can visit Camille on her website, Twitter, or Facebook!

The Art of Forgetting

A moving and insightful debut novel of great friendship interrupted. Can the relationship survive when the memories are gone?

Library Journal calls The Art of Forgetting a “page turner” for “readers who enjoy intelligent novels about women’s friendships.” Camille calls it the book that you really want to buy the week of June 9th (pretty please!)!

Want to enter to win a copy? Just leave a comment for Camille below! (US & Canada only)

Congrats on the book, it certainly has received praise from the Twittersphere which is not always easy to obtain. A second congrats for the launch of the blog.I think you are in the minority with all of the ideas for posts without the time to get them written. I hope to be lucky enough to win a copy of THE ART OF FORGETTING.

Huffington Post chose THE ART OF FORGETTING as one of the best books coming soon….and SOON is now! Camille did a brilliant job of writing/storytelling the complex issues of friendship and you deserve to treat yourself to her ART.

Hi Camille! And congratulations to you on all the joys you’re celebrating right now. So neat about you and Sarah–and yes, you CAN make truly meaningful and lasting relationships via the internet–I would never have believed that myself until recently, and now I count my Twitter and blogging pals as some of my dearest chums.

I loved the Violets of March, it’s so nice to hear that Camille and Sarah are friends. I’ve been really wanting to read The Art of Forgetting for a while now, mostly because I am fascinated by memory so the premise sounds wonderful. ps. Gorge cover!

I think the story of a virtual friendship helping this book about friendship is wonderful. I follow both you and Sarah on twitter and its your genuine friendship that has made me want to read both of your debuts. Art Of Forgetting sounds like a great read, and I’m looking forward to reading it.

Congratulations on your release, Camille! I have been waiting months to read this, since I first read about it. I haven’t been able to get my hands on a copy yet, but I am determined to do so. I have seen only wonderful reviews for it. I can’t wait to read it. I also agree, beautiful cover!